


covered in all my friends (i still think of the bombs they build)

by InsertLogin



Series: they're teaching me to kill (who's teaching me to love?) [2]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Lu Ten (Avatar) Lives, last four characters have really brief apperances but they're there, zuko is not physically here but you'll see what i mean
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-18
Updated: 2021-01-18
Packaged: 2021-03-13 06:13:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28773663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InsertLogin/pseuds/InsertLogin
Summary: They said that when fighting earthbenders, the moment you fell and hit the ground was the moment you were done for.Lu Ten fell. He did not expect to be pulled back up.
Relationships: Iroh & Lu Ten, Iroh's Wife & Lu Ten (Avatar)
Series: they're teaching me to kill (who's teaching me to love?) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1862509
Comments: 18
Kudos: 61





	covered in all my friends (i still think of the bombs they build)

**Author's Note:**

> *mumbles about how i decided that lu ten, in fact, does live, and because i don't want to do a lot of exposition and setup in what's now going to be work four, here's a oneshot establishing where he is in this series*
> 
> Quick notes:  
> \- I don't how the Dai Li interact with individual people so if I got it wrong, no I didn't <3  
> \- Title comes from The Only Hope For Me Is You by MCR. Title is subject to change because I don't think it fits but I have to work on other stuff, so I don't have the time to stress over a more apt title.  
> \- In my atla fics, most people have brown eyes and a bender's eyes will change color when they bend. So there's no "Ah this person is Fire Nation because their eyes are golden" stuff here.  
> \- Warnings for reflection on a dubious relationship (the relationship, in reality, isn't abusive but the POV character isn't aware of that. it's a bit of a complicated situation that will be addressed in future works), limb loss, references about general bad behavior by soldiers, and minor referenced abuse.  
> 

Lu Ten did not expect to wake up. Honestly, he hadn’t really expected anything during what he had thought were his last moments, screaming as the earth crushed him, the metal of his armor only aiding to crunch his bones and grind his flesh. Maybe, he had wished for it to just be over, because if he had to die, he wanted it to be a quick death. 

In the end, Lu Ten wasn’t really sure what he was thinking at the time. The only certain thing was the knowledge that he was going to die. Then he had blacked out at some point, and now he was awake again. 

Lu Ten didn’t want to say he was alive. He couldn’t be alive, not after that. 

And yet, the longer he stayed awake, the more likely that seemed. 

The thing that really convinced him was the smell. Whenever his father had spoken of death, it sounded like things would be painless, relatively nice looking, and at the very least _clean_. Lu Ten could rationalize why the first two would be untrue, but why in the names of all the spirits would there be the smell of _manure_ in the spirit world?

His stomach rolled painfully and Lu Ten wondered, with a detached mind, if his stomach was bruised. Assuming stomachs could be bruised. 

He frowned. Were stomachs bruisable? 

Lu Ten thought they were, before thinking that it’d be pretty weird if an internal organ got bruised, before figuring that yeah, if ribs could be bruised, an organ could be definitely bruised. 

Then he wondered what the definition of bruise actually was. 

Before he could try to rack his brain, the sound of a door opening hit his ears and his situation belatedly caught up with him. 

He was in a place he didn’t recognize, probably near no one he actually knew. He was severely injured if how his body was screaming had anything to say about it. He was probably somewhere in the Earth King, probably very near Ba Sing Se if not _in it_. 

Not to mention that he had helped lead some of the siege was the son of the general who led it all. If the siege was still going on— 

Lu Ten paused. _Was_ the siege still going on? He didn’t think he lost too much time, but he could only hear the sounds of the street, not the sounds of distant fighting. If it was over, did that mean that the Fire Nation won? Or were they all slaughtered? No, not slaughtered, because the Earth Kingdom’s primary defense were their benders, so if they lost, they were all _crushed_ —

“Holy shit,” someone said, and Lu Ten started, instinctively trying to push himself up before his body decided that that was a faux pas, and left him a shaking mess on whatever he was lying on. 

“ _Holy shit_ ,” the person repeated, and a girl entered Lu Ten’s hazy vision. 

“Right, right, I need to do the check,” she muttered. “Wait. Did Hafeeza say he was in a coma or unconscious? Are you in a coma or unconscious?”

Lu Ten had to marvel at the instances the universe placed him in. He tried to open his mouth, but his face seared as he tried to move.

The girl didn’t wait for him in any case. Lu Ten felt something in his hand, he thought it was his hand, at least, and the girl said, “If you can hear me, squeeze my hand twice.” 

Lu Ten’s hand was currently arguing that it should go on strike, along with the rest of his body, but muscle memory led to two small squeezes. 

“Oma and Shu,” the girl said and Lu Ten froze. “Alright. This is… this is manageable. We’ll wait for Hafeeza to get home, and she’s a doctor, so she’ll know what to do. You just… need to not panic. Just relax. And I’ll change some of your bandages so we can keep swelling down. I’m pretty sure this is swelling, at least. We need to change the bandages anyways to keep things clean, so whether there’s swelling or not doesn’t matter.”

Lu Ten wanted to ask her to slow down, to explain what was happening, who she was—because she was Earth Kingdom, he knew, but why was she and this Hafeeza helping him?—but the girl was already moving and his lips couldn’t form words. 

“Relax, relax,” the girl was muttering, but he didn’t think she was talking to him. 

Lu Ten just blinked blearily and tried to practice the meditation breaths his father had drilled into him. It wasn’t as if there was anything else to do. 

Plenty of the girl’s family had come back before Hafeeza did: a mother, a father, a younger brother, a handful of cousins, an older brother’s wife and her children. Lu Ten tried to attach names to them, but he couldn’t even see them, so he stopped trying. 

The girl’s name, he knew, though. She had been nervously talking to him, and let loose that Noor was her name and Hafeeza her sister. 

Which meant in total, the only things he knew about his captors-or-saviors were that they were Earth Kingdom, had a large family, one woman’s name was Hafeeza and she was a doctor, and Hafeeza’s younger sister was named Noor. 

Also, Noor really liked the color purple. If she had the money, she would have all her clothes be purple. Which Lu Ten could get behind. 

And while having someone there was in some ways reassuring, he partly wanted Noor to shut up, and if not that, to tell him what was going on. 

But Noor was just a kid, so Lu Ten was holding out hope for when Hafeeza came back. An actual adult who would interact with him honestly seemed like a miracle at this point. 

“You’re still awake, right?” Noor asked, slapping her hand into Lu Ten’s again. 

With a sigh, he squeezed it twice. 

“Good,” Noor said, and then launched into a retelling of one her favorite plays. 

Hafeeza really couldn’t come soon enough. 

The only reason Lu Ten had known Hafeeza had come back was because Noor had cut herself off, ran somewhere else, and yelled, “He woke up!” 

“What?” a sharp voice asked back, and Lu Ten tilted his head to the slightest bit to the side so, just in the corner of his vision, he saw another figure approach with Noor. 

Noor was talking along the way, in a hushed whisper that Lu Ten could just make out. 

“He woke up several hours ago, and I did the hand squeezing test, and he _responded!_ And I changed a lot of his bandages and he didn’t even wince so I think I did it good. I also told him to relax and made sure he stayed awake the entire time, because he can’t go back to sleep right now, right?”

“Right,” Hafeeza said, sounding as tired as Lu Ten felt. “Noor, can you give us a bit of privacy?”

From what he knew of Noor, Lu Ten thought she wanted to make some snarky response back, but Noor’s footsteps echoed and soon it was just him and Hafeeza. 

“Alright, I’m going to be honest,” Hafeeza said, and Lu Ten knew, in an instance, that this was it. Maybe a child wouldn’t be able to recognize him, but Hafeeza would, and she was going to ransom or torture or try and get as much information out of him as possible. 

“I don’t really have the supplies to treat you,” Hafeeza continued, “and all medical facilities are more than a little booked right now. I’m still learning how to be a doctor, so I can definitely help you, but you’re not going to get the best care here. So sorry in advance for that.”

That… was certainly not what Lu Ten expected. He opened his mouth and Hafeeza rushed over to somewhere else. 

“Water, right?” she asked, and Lu Ten didn’t really have the chance to tell her no when she was back with a glass with some water. She held the glass up and Lu Ten tried to drink. The water honestly tasted like shit, but he supposed it was better than nothing. 

“We can go over your injuries tomorrow,” she said, “and while I don’t think that speaking will cause anything _bad_ , it’ll be better to wait a bit for you to get your strength up. Does that sound okay?”

Lu Ten started to nod when Hafeeza shook her head. 

“No, no, don’t do that,” she said. “You had quite a bit of head trauma and you were knocked out for a while, so just to be safe, we don’t want to jostle your head too much.” 

Lu Ten stared. _Knocked out_. He supposed it made sense, considering the gap in his knowledge but… but how long?

Something must have shown on his face, because Hafeeza’s slightly blurry face softened even more. 

“I don’t know exactly how long,” she said, “but I dragged you out around noon, and if you’ve been awake for a few hours like Noor said, then you’ve been unconscious for about four hours.” 

Lu Ten furrowed his brows. That… well, at least it wasn’t a day. Then the first part of the sentence caught up to him. 

_Hafeeza_ had dragged him out? He had been wearing Fire Nation armor. Did she notice the difference between Fire Nation and Earth Kingdom armor?

Hafeeza couldn’t read his question on his face that time, or maybe she ignored it. Instead, she started on what he supposed were bandages. 

Lu Ten couldn’t really see much from his position, only some bandages on his chest and his feet, which must have been raised, and Hafeeza, as she worked. Sometimes, Lu Ten flinched or pain came to wrack his body, but for the most part, things stayed consistently numb. Numb enough that he could dazedly wonder more about why this Earth Kingdom woman had saved him. 

“Alright,” Hafeeza said after an eternity, “I made sure that your wounds won’t get infected, but I’ll need to do more later, especially with your legs and eye.” 

“What’s with my legs and eye?” Lu Ten managed to gasp, wincing at something in his chest. His ribs, he thought. 

“Uh, they’re just,” Hafeeza frowned, “not in good shape. Don’t worry about it though.” 

Panic seized in his chest and the world grew even more out of focus. “What happened?”

“Look,” Hafeeza said slowly, “you’re in a precarious state right now, and panicking will only make things worse. Your legs and eye will still be here tomorrow, so right now, your concern is just making sure that you keep calm, you follow instructions, and you rest so you can heal.” 

“So I should… sleep?” Lu Ten asked, incredulity coating his voice.

Hafeeza shook her head. 

“You may have a concussion,” she said, “so right now, what you need to do is just relax. Don’t think about things too much or concentrate.”

Which Lu Ten already failed at, but okay. 

“I’ll wake you up periodically when you do sleep, just to make sure you can,” Hafeeza continued. “And, well, I don’t want to put any more stress on you, but yes, I know about what they must have done to you, and I’m sorry for that. No one else knows and no one else needs to know. There are ways to get around not having proper identification.” 

Lu Ten stared at her, confusion lapping at his mind until it ebbed into clarity. 

She thought he was Earth Kingdom. She thought he was an Earth Kingdom prisoner of war, shoved forward into battle as fodder. 

One part of Lu Ten almost went to correct her, because it wouldn’t be honorable to use that excuse, to go along a lie whose basis was as terrible as that, but she was already moving, already telling him that she had other responsibilities to attend to, that he should relax, but not sleep until she got back, and Lu Ten never got the chance. 

&&&

Hafeeza knew better than most the toll the siege had had on the city. She and other Lower Ring residents, especially people with the barest hint of medical experience, had been sent out to retrieve fallen soldiers, and any Lower Ring earthbenders were sent to fight. It was a stark contrast to the often upheld motto that there was no war in Ba Sing Se, but Hafeeza used to live outside these walls, and she had known that it was only a matter of time before even Ba Sing Se was attacked.

Everyone was immortal until they died. A city was impenetrable until it was breached. 

And she had been right, because not even a year into her stay in the city, the siege had begun. At first, she had been terrified, but her parents pointed to the walls. The fires could rage but they couldn’t get through _that_. 

Until they had, of course. By the time the Fire Nation came through, Hafeeza had almost forgotten they were under siege. They had the Agrarian Zone to provide food and other raw plant material, and since no one ever talked about the war, it was only the smoke in the distance that alerted her that anything was going on. 

Things had changed, then. The war was still not spoken of, and yet, every Lower Ring resident that was able was sent out to help. 

Yuvan had told the teacher she was sick, and Hafeeza had been lucky enough to get the notes on the lectures. It was supposed to be a short absence, but then the Fire Nation kept pressing closer and closer. 

Some days, Hafeeza went to sleep, sure that in just a week, the Inner Wall would be broken and Ba Sing Se would truly fall. Some days, she was sure that the next day, one member of her family or herself wouldn’t come home, because they had been caught in the crossfires like so many others had. Some days, she thought that the siege would never end, as the number of days it lasted ticked upwards until she had stopped counting. 

And then, three days ago, Hafeeza had been pulling up soldiers, sifting through dead bodies to try and find someone who was alive, and she found underneath a pile, a crushed man in Fire Nation armor. Her first instinct had been revulsion, but the soldier’s helmet was cracked and she caught a glimpse of a face that could have been her cousin’s. 

And at that moment, there were several things that she remembered.

The Fire Nation committed atrocities and prisoners of wars were some of the most frequent victims. The Fire Nation adhered to its own moral code, and while they treated and cared for their own soldiers, they didn’t give a shit for other nations’ peoples. They would slaughter an entire Earth Kingdom regiment even if the regiment had already surrendered. 

The Siege on Ba Sing Se had been so incredibly bloody, even for the Fire Nation. Some of the soldiers they sent forth seemed inexperienced, more cannon fodder than anything else. 

Which meant that there was a very real possibility this was a poor Earth Kingdom man who had been kidnapped and forced into that wretched red armor to be crushed by his own countrymen. 

Hafeeza had stripped him of his dented armor, hefted him up and hurried him back to the Inner Wall, and returning just as quickly to take care of the more obvious Earth Kingdom soldiers. 

And while Hafeeza struggled to get the soldier care—he wasn’t found in the city records and all licensed medics told her that they were prioritising Ba Sing Se residents—the Fire Nation was repelled. Bodies lay scattered across the Agrarian Zone, there was so much rebuilding to do, but the Fire Nation was _gone_. 

Hafeeza had thought it would have made more of a difference. But she still was sent out, though she brought back corpses instead of soldiers. The only noticeable difference was that she could return to some classes and that she had a soldier in need of care in her home. 

Hafeeza never regretted anyone she saved, but she wondered if she shouldn’t have thought about this arrangement more. There was barely room in her home from another person, much less someone who needed a clean and calm environment to recover. 

Despite it all, he seemed to be healing. Most of him, at least. 

Hafeeza still hadn’t told him about his legs. And his left eye still seemed out of focus. 

“Hafeeza,” a voice said, and it took her a moment to locate her sister. “Yuvan’s here. You need to get going if you want to be on time.” 

Right. Because she had class. 

A part of Hafeeza wanted to collapse right there and then. Her days had just been city mandated work and trying to help the soldier, and now that she was able to return to classes, she did not want to add the effort of studying and learning to her already heavy plate. 

But the thing was that Yuvan, though he always played it off, risked a lot, first securing her a spot in Ba Sing Se’s University and then getting her there when she could attend class. 

So, while Hafeeza _really_ didn’t want to go to school, she would. 

“You’ll be alright?” Hafeeza asked and Noor rolled her eyes. 

“I know what to do if wounds start bleeding and if he wakes up again,” Noor said, “and I know to replace the bandages. And I work just down the street, so if there’s a commotion, I’ll know. Just _go_.”

Hafeeza grabbed her bag and headed to the outer room where Yuvan was waiting for her. 

“Ready?” Yuvan asked, and Hafeeza nodded. Hafeeza donned Yuvan’s sister’s outer robe and sprayed a bit of scent to cover the lingering smells. She always tried to clean herself best she could before she left, but it was hard to be completely clean when the air reeked, the water was dirty, and filth was everywhere. 

The two of them made the journey to the Middle Ring, and, just like every time, Hafeeza wondered at the ease Yuvan had. He was allowed to go _anywhere_ and he was barely questioned on his movements. Unlike Hafeeza, who had to avoid the Dai Li who swarmed the Lower Ring, especially now that the siege was over. 

“So how’s your guest?” Yuvan asked. 

Shrugging and tired, she replied, “The same.” 

“You know,” Yuvan said tentatively, “I have space. I could take him.” 

Hafeeza bit back a retort and instead, stared resolutely at the ground. 

“You wouldn't be weak to accept,” Yuvan said with a quiet and reasonable voice that Hafeeza hated. 

“Yuvan, with all due respect, shut up,” Hafeeza said and she heard his mouth click shut. 

To his credit, Yuvan didn’t say anything else until they reached the university, just bidding her a small goodbye before going to his class. Hafeeza, on the other hand, wandered campus a bit waiting for her class to start and to avoid the other students. Her disguise was fragile and besides, she always thought better when she was alone. 

The thing was that she really _couldn’t_ keep the soldier at her home. If Yuvan meant his offer, which he always did, then she would have to take it. 

But at the same time, Yuvan wasn’t a doctor. He wasn’t learning anything even remotely in the medical field. If something happened, he’d have to call an actual doctor, and then there would have to be documentation and explanations for this most likely but still not confirmed Earth Kingdom soldier. Yuvan was good with paperwork, but it would still lead to nothing good. 

Hafeeza chewed on the inside of her cheek, contemplating all sorts of scenarios, from regular but still terrible law enforcement getting involved to the _Dai Li_ hearing about it, before she realized that her class was going to start soon. 

It was fine. _She_ was fine. She didn’t have to think about this now. All that mattered was this stupid class, and she would think about _that_ the entire time, not about the soldier who would need aid that even if Hafeeza knew how to give, couldn’t due to resources, time, and fucking money. 

Like Hafeeza said. It would be fine as long as she didn’t think about it. 

Because the universe decided that it hated Hafeeza, the soldier was talkative when she came home that night. 

“I’m kind of tired,” she eventually snapped, because sure, the soldier sounded nice and she was sure he meant well and all that, but she was tired. 

“Oh,” the soldier said. “Can I—is it alright if I just asked one question, then?”

Hafeeza’s brain was running through what to do with someone who just suffered a stroke, but she nodded. 

“What is wrong with my legs?” There was a tremor to the soldier’s voice and Hafeeza froze. “I know I was hit in the head, so that explains my eye not being… great, but I can’t… I can’t really feel my feet and I definitely can’t walk.”

“Did you try?” 

The soldier nodded. “I couldn’t even put weight on them,” he said. “So I didn’t even get up.” 

“They got crushed,” Hafeeza said, because she didn’t know how to be delicate, not right now. “They’ll probably have to be amputated.”

Maybe if Hafeeza was a better doctor, an actual one, she would have been able to help more. But she wasn’t, and there wasn’t one waiting around to heal the soldier, so they would just all have to deal with this. 

“Soon?” the soldier asked, after a loud swallow. 

“I need to see when we can move you to Yuvan’s place,” Hafeeza said, because the move would have to happen, she realized. “But soon after that, probably.” 

“There’s no other option?” the soldier asked. 

“It’s the only one within my skill,” Hafeeza said. “There aren’t many doctors around who’ll be able to spare help, and I’m not sure how much they can salvage anyways.” 

“Thank you,” the soldier said and Hafeeza nodded before leaving for her cot.

She told Yuvan the plan next time they met up. 

“I don’t think I can bring a wheelchair into the Lower Ring without suspicion,” Yuvan said. “I can get someone to meet us outside with one, though.” 

“So we’ll have to carry him to the Middle Ring,” Hafeeza said. 

“We can both carry him,” Yuvan suggested. “Like you hold up one side, I’ll hold up the other, and we can lift him through. It’ll jostle him less and it’d look less out of place.” 

It took a few more days for Hafeeza to think that the soldier was relatively stable, and that was when she let Yuvan know it was time. 

When asked if he was ready, the soldier just let out an aborted shrug. Yuvan helped him get some more Earth Kingdom-like garb on. 

Then, they lifted him up. Hafeeza could clearly hear the hitch in the soldier’s breath, but either the arrangement didn’t hurt that much, or he was just really good at dealing with pain. She hoped it was the former. 

“The story,” Yuvan said, as they started to leave, “is that our friend here got into a fight, and we have to carry him back home. Explains the bruised face and the robes cover up everything else.” 

“What if the guards ask his name?” Hafeeza asked, maneuvering through a narrow alleyway. 

“They won’t,” Yuvan said. “I’ve got an authentic pass, and they’ll see the severity of the injuries.” 

“But what if—”

“Sasrutha,” the soldier rasped. 

Hafeeza frowned. “What?”

“Name.” 

“There,” Yuvan said. “We have a name. Now let’s get going, because unlike you, some of our muscles aren’t meant to haul men around for hours.” 

Hafeeza rolled her eyes but did move a bit quicker, always keeping an eye on how Yuvan and Sasrutha were faring. Despite the fact that Yuvan wasn’t used to this kind of weight, he was holding up pretty well. She supposed it helped that Sasrutha was shorter than the two of them, so they didn’t have to worry about Sasrutha’s feet tripping them up. 

As Yuvan expected, the guards let them through fairly quickly, though Hafeeza thought it had more to do with their performance than lack of curiosity. They glanced at Sasrutha once, then paid attention to Yuvan, then at Hafeeza, who shot them her best _Well, what the fuck do you think you’re doing?_ look. 

A few streets away, there was a wheelchair waiting and someone who left as soon as they arrived. Yuvan didn’t seem worried, so Hafeeza just guessed that that had been the friend Yuvan had recruited to help. 

They lowered Sasrutha into the wheelchair and took a moment to rest. 

“Who’s going to push first?” Hafeeza asked, taking a few deep breaths. 

“You,” Yuvan gasped out.

“I could push myself,” Sasrutha offered. “Like with the wheels and all.” 

“You’ll just hurt your back,” Hafeeza said, taking a deep breath. “This wheelchair’s not really built for a user's mobility.” 

Hafeeza stretched out her arms and then said, “Anyways, I can push first, but let me know if you get jolted around too much or anything.” 

Sasrutha nodded and Hafeeza tried to gently push Sasrutha down the street. His head was high, eyes trained forward, and she had the feeling he was distinctly avoiding looking down. 

“So… we’re going to your place?” Sasrutha asked, tilting his head the slightest bit towards Yuvan. 

“Yeah,” Yuvan said. “There’s an extra room, and it’s going to be easier on all of us with you there.” 

“Well, not for you,” Hafeeza pointed out. 

“Ma keeps telling me to get a life and friends,” Yuvan said. “She’ll probably be pleased.” 

Hafeeza raised a brow, because she had met Yuvan’s mother, but the tension that had entered Sasrutha’s frame when Hafeeza pointed out the issue seemed to fade. Or maybe he was just tired. 

“Honestly, this might be the worst on you, Sasrutha,” Yuvan said lightly. “If my mom likes you, she’ll try to get you into the family somehow.”

“Is… is that bad?” 

“She likes pai sho,” Yuvan said simply. 

Sasrutha’s frame shuddered and Hafeeza stopped suddenly, worried he was choking. 

He, in fact, was not choking. Just doing his best approximation of a laugh. 

“My father,” Sasrutha gasped out as an explanation. “Big fan.” 

Hafeeza let out a breath of relief and went back to pushing. 

“Of pai sho?” Yuvan asked and Sasrutha nodded. 

“Then he and my ma will get along,” Yuvan remarked drily. 

“I guess,” Sasrutha muttered, and the silence was stifling. 

“Okay, Yuvan, your turn,” Hafeeza said, coming to a stop when even the sounds of the wheels turning couldn’t distract. 

“I’m still tired,” Yuvan protested. 

“Aren’t you majoring in archaeology or that rock science?”

“You mean geology?”

Hafeeza snapped her fingers. “That’s the word.”

Yuvan shot her a look. “Double major,” he reminded her, “so yes. But what does that have to do with anything?”

“Well, you’ll have to lift heavy rocks and items.”

“I’ll have to lift heavy rocks and items,” Yuvan repeated. “In geology and archaeology.”

“Isn’t that what you do?”

“It is, in fact, not what we do,” Yuvan said, and opened his mouth in that way that signalled he was going to go into lecture mode. 

“If you have enough energy to argue, you have enough energy to push,” Hafeeza cut in smoothly, and stepped out from behind the wheelchair. Yuvan was spluttering and Sasrutha was doing that choke-laugh, which, considering his face was still very bruised, made sense. 

Still, Yuvan started pushing, muttering obscenities along the way, and Sasrutha didn’t seem as tense. 

This, Hafeeza figured, was a much more pleasant sort of quiet. 

The fact that the only strain her body was feeling was that of walking only had the tiniest bit to do with it. 

&&&

Yuvan’s place was certainly very different from Hafeeza’s. It was much bigger and cleaner, for one, though Lu Ten figured that wasn’t for the lack of care. The place they had just left—the Lower Ring—was teeming with all kinds of filth. No amount of cleaning by one person could fix that. 

But it was also so much brighter here. It felt more open and less like Lu Ten was suffocating. 

Which he supposed was good, because apparently he was going to have his limbs _amputated_. 

Lu Ten… didn’t know how he felt about that. He trusted Hafeeza and Yuvan, mainly because there was nothing else for him to do, and if they had wanted to do something to him, they already would have. 

It was strange how little he cared about that, and how little he cared about not caring. A part of him was screaming, true, but the vast majority was just… quiet. 

He felt like, just maybe, there was some part of him buried under the earth. The part that would have raged and fought against these citizens was gone. It was the only explanation as to why he was so nonchalant to peacefully being in Ba Sing Se and why he was cooperating with these Earth Kingdom citizens. 

“Sasrutha?” Yuvan asked, and Lu Ten wondered why he had chosen his uncle’s name. His mother never talked much of her brother. She had only told him that his name meant truth, that they had been Achala-and-Sasrutha, and that he had died young. 

“And that’s the truth of the matter,” Achala had laughed bitterly. “People die, not in a romantic, or fitting, or deserving way. And they don’t come back.” 

Lu Ten wasn’t feeling much, but it felt wrong to use a name so connected to truth as an alias. 

Still, he responded, looking towards Yuvan and startling slightly when saw that Hafeeza was gone. 

“There’s a bell here,” Yuvan said, gesturing at a bell that laid on a table, but was connected to something Lu Ten couldnt’ see. “You can ring it if you need anything. Water, food, going to the bathroom, company, whatever. I’ll come in sometimes to check on you. Does that sound alright?”

Lu Ten nodded, because what else was he going to do, and Yuvan flashed him a smile before leaving. 

Lu Ten didn’t smile back. His face hurt when he did, and he didn’t think it had to do with the bruises. 

Maybe he had died, just a bit. 

&&&

Hafeeza hated to admit it, but things were much easier with Sasrutha away. It took off a lot of stress and she could spend more of her classes actually paying attention and learning instead of masking her emotions. 

Not well enough though, because one of the teaching assistants cornered her outside of class. 

And, because the universe hated Hafeeza, it was Parvaneh. 

Parvaneh wasn’t bad, and that was precisely the problem. If Parvaneh asked, Hafeeza would do or tell her anything. Some people radiated trouble, and Parvaneh radiated trustworthiness. 

So when Parvaneh asked why Hafeeza looked so exhausted and stressed, Hafeeza couldn’t help but answer, even if she changed some of the details. 

“A friend got into a really bad accident,” Hafeeza said, because there was never a war in Ba Sing Se, “and he’s really injured. His legs will probably have to be amputated and there isn’t a doctor available for him. Not to mention that one of his eyes is still blurry from getting hit in the head.” 

Parvaneh looked very concerned. 

“What’s the full range of injuries?”

“Well, his legs were crushed,” she said, “and he has a lot of bruising on most everywhere else on his body. There might be a cracked rib. He was hit in the hit and has extensive bruising. One of his eyes is affected.” 

Parveneh was silent for a long moment and then said, “I do have a practitioner’s license. If you’re not able to find anyone, you can call me.” 

Hafeeza stared. “Re— _really_?”

Parvaneh nodded. “Everyone should have access to medical help,” she said. “I have the skills so I can help.” 

“Oma and Shu, _thank you_.” Hafeeza had to stop herself from throwing her arms around the other woman. “What times work best?”

“Would sooner be better?” Parvaneh asked and Hafeeza nodded. 

“End of this week?” Parvaneh suggested after a moment. “I can come with you after class.” 

“I’ll need to check with my friend,” Hafeeza said, “to see if that’s a good time, but I think it could work.” 

Parvaneh shot her a smile and as Hafeeza walked home, there was a spring in her step that couldn’t be diminished. 

It helped that the time worked for Yuvan too. 

&&&

Lu Ten spent a lot of time watching Ba Sing Se from his window, and he couldn’t help but think that he had expected Ba Sing Se to look different. He had expected all of the Earth Kingdom to look different, to look more like something that was meant to be attacked and conquered. None of those expectations had been met. 

Instead, he had had a queasy stomach on the march to Ba Sing Se and had forced himself not to think during the six hundred fucking days they had besieged the city. 

Now, he had had a queasy stomach because of all the Lower Ring residents and soldiers carted around on stretchers or body bags. Now, he forced himself not to think because he maybe was recovering from a concussion and reality wasn’t something he thought he could really handle. 

But just because he was meant to rest his mind, just because he was avoiding thinking, didn’t mean he didn’t _see_. 

There were bad things, the deaths, and crimes, and filth that people tried to hide instead of addressing. There was that time in Hafeeza’s house when he had been left alone and someone had been screaming for help, but Lu Ten couldn’t help. There were the things that needed to change and yet, hadn’t. 

There were good things, though. Or rather, human things. People going to the market, going to watch plays, going to visit family. People on journeys to places that Lu Ten couldn’t guess from his window, but smiling all the same. People who helped each other, with purchases or directions, whether in the Lower or Middle Ring.

It reminded him more than a little of the Fire Nation towns he had visited on the excursions his mother had taken him out on when he was young. 

“You need to see the people,” she had said. It had been something just between the two of them, until Ursa came and her children born. Then it was something between all of them until his mother had disappeared. 

Lu Ten doubted that Zuko or Azula remembered the trips, but Lu Ten certainly did. And though the cultures and background were different, it didn’t change what people were like and that he could see the same mannerisms here that he saw then. 

The Earth Kingdom people were… they were really just people. Not like Lu Ten and his family, because they were raised to be royals and royals never got the chance of a normal life like everyone else, but they were the bakers he had seen, the artisans and the craftsmen. They were the same playwrights and the poets who wrote and ached for something more in the stories they told. They were the inventors and the philosophers, always striving, always changing, and they were also the laborers and the farmers, the backbone of society and no less important than those resting upon them. 

Yuvan and Hafeeza complained about school like Lu Ten had complained about his tutors. Yuvan would crack jokes and Hafeeza would give dry comments, like Lu Ten’s own friends—

Lu Ten forced himself to breathe. To not think, just observe. To note the fact that everyone in the Earth Kingdom were just people and Lu Ten hadn’t thought they were, and not to deal with his feelings. 

It was almost comforting to fall into something familiar, because it had been the same when he was a prince. He couldn’t express doubt or concern. He couldn’t be a crack in the facade of the royal family. 

But even as he knew just how many soldiers didn’t recognize him without him standing next to Iroh, even as he learned of what six hundred and more names had done in six hundred and more places, even as he learned all the horrors of war through boasts and laughter, he doubted. 

Perhaps he _had_ been a crack in the facade. Perhaps that was why he fell. 

It should have been an incentive to keep his feelings away, because he could not fall again, not here, not again. But there was no one to remind him to keep up the facade. Lu Ten was no prince and though no one spoke of the war, he thought about it more than he ever had and skirted closer and closer around his feelings.

One day he would touch them. 

But, Lu Ten decided, as he turned away from the window, turned away from the friends he had made, the soldiers who tried to pull him from the earth’s grip and only served to suffocate him, it would not be today.

&&&

At the end of the week, Hafeeza walked Parvaneh to Yuvan’s place, her mind running over how this could all go wrong but also screaming about after this, it would be over. Sasrutha would have been treated, and life could move on. 

They exchanged pleasantries at the door with Yuvan’s mother, and then made their way to where Sasrutha was. 

Hafeeza knew she hadn’t underestimated the injuries at Parvaneh’s slight hiss. She examined it carefully, and eventually stepped back. 

“Alright,” she said slowly. “Amputation would be the best option, because the breaks weren’t clean in the slightest. You don’t have to, but it would require more work to make sure the wounds don’t become infected, and you wouldn’t be able to walk on your legs.” 

“There are… there are prosthetics, right?” Sasrutha asked. “If I amputate, I could get them to walk again?”

“That’s a definite possibility, yes,” Parvaneh said. “Along with a wheelchair. In either case, it’ll take work to get used to it, and to deal with the aftereffects, but that is a path you can go by.” 

Sasrutha was quiet for a moment and then nodded. “Alright, I want to have them amputated.” 

“Do you want to have it now?” Parvaneh asked. 

“Do you have what you need?” Sasrutha asked right back. 

Parvaneh nodded. 

Sasrutha shrugged. “Might as well get it over with.”

Parvaneh nodded and opened her bag with a sigh. “Then let’s get to it.”

&&&

Lu Ten decided it was best not to think about his amputated limbs and instead, focus on recovery. That was what everyone else was harking at him, at any rate. He still had bruises, an eye that would probably always remain blurry, and ribs that were healing. 

It wasn’t like it was hard to not think. He didn’t spend much time alone, with Yuvan or his mother coming by often enough. Lu Ten was fairly certain that there were more members of his family present in the house, but those were the only two who stopped by. 

Yuvan’s mother, a woman named Asha, was… an interesting character. He met her first the day after the amputation, when she had come in with food. There were some meaningless pleasantries, and after he had eaten a bit, she dragged a table that had been outside of his field of vision and started setting up a game of pai sho. 

“My son tells me you play,” she just said. “Let’s see how well.” 

And so they played, and it felt comforting, falling back into something familiar. Lu Ten lost, but the game had lasted a long time and Asha was smiling at the end of it. 

“You are a good player,” she told him, “in time, you may be able to put up a better fight.” 

Lu Ten felt the closest flicker of a feeling he had felt in days as he, with a touch of annoyance, said, “That _was_ a good fight.”

Asha snorted. “That was only a couple of hours. I competed in a tournament where the longest game lasted for _days_.” 

“Did you win?” Lu Ten asked. 

“Not then, no,” Asha said, “but winning’s not the point. You don’t learn anything when you win quickly.” 

“What do you learn when you slowly lose, then?”

“You learn what strategies work, and what don’t,” Asha said. “You learn your level, and you learn camaraderie, because you and your opponent are evenly matched.”

Lu Ten stared at Asha. “That’s not how life works.” 

Asha snorted. “Pai sho’s not life. It’s a game. It can teach a number of things, but it’s you who needs to know where those lessons can be applied elsewhere.” 

Asha stood up, gathering and resetting the pieces as she did so.

“I have duties of my own to attend to,” she said, “but I will be back. Feel free to practice.” 

Lu Ten nodded and half bowed, just remembering to keep it something befitting an Earth Kingdom citizen and not a Fire Nation prince. 

The door closed and Lu Ten looked at the pai sho table. He hadn’t asked for any books, because while spoken language remained largely uniform except for dialects, the Earth Kingdom written language was one that Lu Ten couldn’t decipher. 

Pai sho, though remained a constant. 

He started to remake Asha’s moves. 

Yuvan also spent a fair amount of time with Lu Ten. 

At first it was just to pass on news, things about how Hafeeza couldn’t visit, since curfew meant she could only go to class and return just in time, how Parvaneh, the doctor who had performed the amputation, would be coming again to check on him, or status updates on when his prosthetics would arrive. There were some rarer instances of actual news, like when Yuvan told him that the siege was over and the Fire Nation had been driven back. 

“Apparently,” he had also said, “we killed one of their princes.” 

But as time progressed, he came for more casual instances. Yuvan shared his school books, and when Lu Ten, embarrassed, said he couldn’t read, Yuvan had taught him.

He also came in at opportune times whenever Lu Ten was playing Asha. The more time went on, the more Lu Ten realized Asha’s true skill in the game. That first day was just a test of Lu Ten’s general movements and strategies, to see Lu Ten’s level, and as he improved, the more complex moves she would take. 

“You know,” Lu Ten said as Asha beat him _again_ , “I used to think I was pretty good at pai sho.” 

“There is always someone better,” Asha said. “Besides, I’m older than you, and I have spent a lot of time playing.” 

“So have I,” Lu Ten said. “It was the first game I ever played. My father was obsessed with it.” 

“It is a good game,” Asha said, and he wondered how she would feel if she knew she was approving of the Dragon of the West’s taste. “I am sorry for your loss.”

Lu Ten blinked, and then caught his mistake. “It’s not—I—I suppose he _is_ obsessed, but I don’t know.” 

He had a good guess, of course, that Iroh was alive. The death of the Crown Prince would be momentous news. Yuvan would have told him. 

But at the same time, he didn’t know. There was no news of Iroh’s movements, and Yuvan had heard rumors he refused to share. 

“Rumors may have some truth behind them,” Yuvan had said, “but I don’t want to risk spreading lies.” 

“I am sorry for your loss,” Asha repeated, and then packed up again, leaving Lu Ten alone. 

He rearranged the tiles, anything to occupy his mind. 

It was over pai sho that Iroh had taught Lu Ten most of what he knew. It was over pai sho that Lu Ten had learned the Fire Nation’s reasons for the war—to pass on knowledge and enlightenment, to bring peace everywhere. And it was over pai sho that Iroh had told him that he had seen a vision of him conquering Ba Sing Se, a vision that was no doubt sent by the spirits.

It would help in the war effort, Iroh had also said, and he seemed more fixated on the glory of conquering than what he was supposed to usher in. 

Lu Ten had come because he was finally old enough, and because he was a loyal son. So even though doubts curdled in his mind as soldiers talked about the war, not as if it was something for a greater cause, he had stayed and supported his father. 

Iroh told him that the application of knowledge was always what defined a man as wise or not. Asha had implied something similar. 

If Lu Ten applied his knowledge, then there were inevitable facts.

One: the war needed to end. It served no greater purpose, had no net gain, and was for no noble deed. He had seen disgraceful conduct among the honored troops, and sometimes, the poverty he saw in the Earth Kingdom was only rivaled by the poverty he saw in the Fire Nation. And thus, the Fire Nation was in the wrong with this. 

Two: Iroh was a liar. Lu Ten loved him, of course he did, but it didn’t change that Iroh had taught him these trains of thought and yet, it was his father that led campaign after campaign, that blazed through the war without pausing to even think. 

Many people said that Iroh was a wise man, but now, Lu Ten couldn’t see it. 

Lu Ten flinched as the white lotus tile fell from his grip and clattered onto the table. Staring at it, he half heartedly tried to close the floodgates, to not think. 

But, Lu Ten realized, he did not want to be his father. 

He moved the tile into its first position, and as he played against himself, Fire Nation against Earth Kingdom, Iroh against what he taught, he felt. 

Lu Ten was still thinking that night as he tried to sleep, though now, he thought of the family he never met. 

On his mother’s side, he supposedly had cousins, aunts, uncles, and another set of grandparents and Lu Ten had never even seen them once. 

He hadn’t ever asked why he couldn’t meet them. Not even once. He had been content with the stories Achala would tell him, and his small family had seemed large enough. 

So when he was a bit older and Ursa came to be a part of the family, when he heard Ursa telling Achala of her family and friends, and how despite all of that, none came to visit, he hadn’t been very surprised. 

That seemed wrong now. Even though he didn’t interact much with either Hafeeza or Yuvan’s family, he knew they all knew about each other. There were in-laws living with in-laws in Hafeeza’s case, and her sister-in-law’s family lived close enough that they could visit. 

Yuvan’s extended family didn’t live in the same house, but from what he gathered, a number of the other homes in the neighborhood belonged to extended family members.

It… sounded nice, and Lu Ten wondered if that was something he could have had. If he could have been the older or littler cousin, if he could have had family friends he called _aunt_ and _uncle_ , if he could have heard the stories his mother had haltingly recalled for him about his family from the subjects themselves. 

And Lu Ten wondered who made the decision to take that away from him. Because that sort of a family didn’t exist on his father’s side. Ozai had always been cold to him, Azulon distant, and any relationship he could have had with his aunt or cousins was impeded by the fact that after Achala left, Ozai kept his side of the family further apart. He wished he could have known what Zuko and Azula’s favorite colors and foods were, but he really couldn’t say. 

Lu Ten wondered if Iroh had a part in it, because Achala had never spoken about her family around him. 

Lu Ten did not want to think about that. He pushed himself up and looked up away from his legs, or what was left of them. Funny to think that despite the time had passed, Lu Ten was still avoiding what had already happened. Funny to think that to avoid one thing, he had blundered straight into the only other thing he had wanted to avoid. 

It wasn’t that Lu Ten was ignoring that he had lost his legs, nor that Lu Ten couldn’t feel his body try and reach for limbs that weren’t there anymore, but he had enough on his plate without this. 

His eyes fell on the window, and as soon as they did, something moved. He couldn’t tell what it was, but it had the shape of a _person_. 

Lu Ten lurched back, grabbing at the bell had shown him, the first day he had come. 

&&&

Yuvan was used to being awakened by strange things at unusual times, so the moment he heard a bell, his eyes snapped open and he was out the door. It was only as he was walking that he registered that it was the bell to Sasrutha’s room that had been ringing. 

“What happened?” Yuvan asked as he came in. Sasrutha looked shaken, hands clenching the sheets and staring out the window. 

“There was someone there,” Sasrutha said quietly. “They left as soon as I looked.”

If Yuvan had been anyone else, he might have brushed it off. But he knew Ba Sing Se, and he knew its Dai Li, and he knew that one of their agents had to be the nighttime visitor. The only question was where the partner was, because everyone knew Dai Li traveled in pairs. 

“Don’t worry about it,” Yuvan said, because acting scared now, moving Sasrutha to somewhere safer, would look suspicious. 

“That was a person, though, right? I’m not crazy?”

It would have been so easy to lie to Sasrutha, to say that there was no one, but Yuvan abhorred lying. 

Yuvan glanced quickly at the window, but there was no one there. 

“Ba Sing Se has secret police,” he explained in a low tone, because there was no reason for Sasrutha to know. “They’re called the Dai Li, and because of them, there is no war in Ba Sing Se.”

Sasrutha’s brows furrowed, mouth open to contradict, but then Yuvan added, “That’s what they tell people and we have to listen.” 

Yuvan didn’t expect Sasrutha to understand the full implications, but he seemed to have understood enough. 

“What about the Lower Ring?” he asked. “They were sent out, weren’t they?”

“It’s why Hafeeza hasn’t been able to visit as often,” Yuvan said. “She can get out long enough for classes some days, but the Dai Li are doing damage control. Staying in the Middle Ring long and visiting people here would be suspicious.” 

It took a moment for Sasrutha to digest that. “I didn’t know that,” he said after that. “I thought…”

“It’d be safe?” Yuvan asked after Sasrutha trailed off. “There’s no place on this planet that’s untouchable. No place you can ever escape to.” 

“Bleak,” Sasrutha said weakly, shoulders slumping. 

Yuvan shrugged. “It’s life. We deal with it. We move on. Now get some sleep.”

“Won’t they try something?”

“My bet’s that they were just looking,” Yuvan said. “You’d know if they wanted to get you.” 

Until, of course, you no longer knew anything. But Sasrutha didn’t need to know that, not now. 

Yuvan couldn’t read Sasrutha’s face well in the dark, but the man lowered himself back down again. 

“Thank you,” Sasrutha said as Yuvan reached the doorway, “for coming.” 

For a moment, Yuvan thought about Sasrutha lying on burned farmland, dressed in Fire Nation armor, probably thinking he was going to die there, alone. Hafeeza had talked to him about the scene a few times since it had happened. There were bodies piled on top of Sasrutha, so not only had he been buried by earth, but by the enemy as well. 

“It’s really the least I can do,” he said softly. “Feel free to call again, if you see anything else.” 

&&&

Something was seriously wrong in Ba Sing Se, but Yuvan wouldn’t tell him anything else. If Lu Ten had known anything about it before, he might have thought that this was why they fought, to take down these secret police that hid the state of the world from its residents. 

But Lu Ten had known nothing about this, and he doubted anyone in the Fire Nation did. The Fire Nation didn’t fight for anything as ostensibly noble as that. 

He wondered what the Dai Li were fighting for. What they thought they were fighting for. And he wondered about Yuvan, how clearly he had known what was happening, and whether the Dai Li were an open secret, or if Yuvan was involved in something deeper. 

The Dai Li agent came by again the next night, and Lu Ten only glanced once at the window before returning to studying Asha’s latest pai sho techniques. His stomach felt sick, but he didn’t flinch or ring the bell as the window opened. 

“Do you want to play?” he asked. No response came, but the agent sat across him. Which he hadn’t exactly expected, but he _did_ offer. 

“Do you invite everyone who comes into your room to a game of pai sho?” the Dai Li agent asked, moving a piece once Lu Ten resetted the board. 

“You came and there was a game out,” Lu Ten said. “Was I supposed to hoard it just for myself?”

The agent snorted. “Most people don’t want anything to do with the Dai Li.” 

Lu Ten thought for a moment, and with his move, said, “I wouldn’t know.” 

The agent tilted their head. 

“I don’t really know what the Dai Li are,” Lu Ten admitted. “Are most people correct?”

“Who knows?” the agent asked with a smile and Lu Ten would have felt unnerved had Ozai not been his uncle and Azulon his grandfather. 

Lu Ten moved a piece and the smile fell. 

“This is an… innovative move,” the agent said and Lu Ten flashed him a smile of his own. Perhaps it was dangerous, getting cocky with a member of the secret police, but honestly, it wasn’t as if Lu Ten could do anything if the agent decided to do something. He might as well enjoy the time that he had. 

“I don’t have much else to do, except pai sho,” Lu Ten shrugged and watched as the agent fell into the trap that he had made. 

Lu Ten didn’t finish the game. A slower, limping death would suffice for this agent. 

“You are from outside the city?” the agent asked and Lu Ten nodded. “I thought so. The accent.”

Lu Ten could only nod again and try to contain his panic. Was he identifiable as from the Fire Nation? Was that why the agent here?

“How goes the outside world?” the agent asked. 

“Farmers farm, bakers bake, people live their lives,” Lu Ten said, shrugging and setting up another pitfall for the agent. “How life usually goes.” 

“Then why did you come to Ba Sing Se?”

“Life as a whole stays the same,” Lu Ten said, “but it changes for individual people. Life didn’t stay the same for me.” 

“Was it a large conflict?” 

“Conflict isn’t the right word,” Lu Ten said, lying so smoothly he didn’t even realize he was doing so until after the words left. “An accident is more fitting. But yes, it was large.”

Then, thinking of the residents for whom there was no war, Lu Ten added, “Others would disagree, though.”

“Have you found the city to your liking?” the agent asked. They were just a few steps away from losing. The agent was _really_ bad at pai sho, and Lu Ten found something comforting in it. 

“Yes,” Lu Ten said. “It’s very peaceful.” 

“And your home wasn’t?”

“There was a lot going on,” Lu Ten just said. “Crowded, busy, worried.”

“We don’t have those issues in Ba Sing Se,” the agent said, almost proudly, almost like they actually believed it, and then went into the last step that they would take in this game. “No famine, no war, no conflicts.”

“It’s nice here,” Lu Ten agreed, and ended the game. 

The agent chuckled and Lu Ten turned his smirk into something more appropriate. 

“You have a beautiful smile,” the agent said, getting up, and Lu Ten couldn’t help but be confused. 

The agent laughed as they left, and Lu Ten resolved to ask Yuvan or Asha for a stronger lock. 

There, in fact, was not a stronger lock, and Yuvan looked slightly concerned when he asked. 

“The wind,” Lu Ten just said. 

Yuvan let out a long sigh at that, and then said, “Do you want to know the news?”

Lu Ten shrugged.

“Apparently,” Yuvan said, “another Fire prince is dead.” 

Lu Ten’s head snapped up. “What?”

“Yeah,” Yuvan said. “The Fire Nation’s blaming the Earth Kingdom for the death of the kid prince. Zu-something. There’s been a boost in enlistment since then.” 

_Zuko_. It had to be Zuko. 

“And did they?” Lu Ten asked.

Yuvan raised his brows. “Did who exactly do what?”

“Did the Earth Kingdom kill him?”

“Not that I know of,” Yuvan said, frowning. “There would be someone somewhere boasting about it, like with that other prince.” 

The other prince. Right. The one who was sitting in front of Yuvan, not that the man knew it. 

“More likely it’s something on the inside,” Yuvan continued. “This prince was a kid, so I doubt they sent him to the front or anything. No other way for us to get at him, so it had to be the Fire Nation.” 

Lu Ten’s face was twitching. He thought of one time, when Zuko had hidden by the turtleduck pond, a hand encircled around his wrist, though not large enough to cover a light burn scar. 

Yuvan frowned. “Are you okay?”

“How old was he?” Lu Ten asked, even though he knew.

“Definitely under twelve. Sasrutha, are you—”

“I had a baby cousin,” Lu Ten said, eyes stinging even though he knew how suspicious this all looked and how crying would make it worse.“He’s… he was ten.” 

Was. Because that was all Zuko was now. Something that was gone. 

“Oh,” Yuvan said. “It’s not your—”

Lu Ten actually started crying then. Yuvan, blessedly, just let him cry. 

The Dai Li agent came back, and then continued to come back. Sometimes they stayed outside of the window as Lu Ten pretended to sleep, and sometimes, they let themself in, either sitting down at the pai sho table or waking Lu Ten up to play. 

By the fifth time he was shaken awake, he was starting to regret ever inviting the agent. He especially regretted it when the agent asked more personal questions. 

“What happened to your legs?” the agent asked and Lu Ten couldn’t help but wince at that. He was still… preferring not to think about the state of the lower half of his body. 

“Accident,” Lu Ten said shortly. “Pretty bad one.” 

“Then it’s been a while,” the agent said, frowning for the first time. “Do you not want to get prosthetics? Or a better wheelchair?”

“Prosthetics are on their way,” Lu Ten said. “It’s slow coming, but it’s coming.”

The agent seemed more distracted than before, which led to an overall dissatisfying game, but Lu Ten was glad of the short length. He hated being alone, but sometimes, the agent made it worse. 

Lu Ten tried to push it all out of his mind, but where feeling in his legs began and ended was even more noticeable that night. 

Lu Ten was not stupid enough to think that the sudden speed in his prosthetics’ delivery was a coincidence. But he decided not to think about that. Instead, he focused on the limbs and how he could tinker with them. They weren’t the best quality legs, but that was fine. 

“We can help you get them on,” Yuvan had offered when he brought in the limbs, but Lu Ten had shaken his head. 

“I need to do this on my own.”

Yuvan had pursed his lips, but, after Lu Ten’s assurance that he knew to use the crutches or call for help if he needed it, had left. He gave in more easily than Hafeeza, who, despite still not being able to make time to visit, used Yuvan as a sort of mail service, mostly to tell Lu Ten to do something other than pai sho for once. 

Which left Lu Ten to where he was now. Slightly undressed, staring at the new ends of his legs, the prosthetics near him and crutches leaning against a nearby wall. 

Lu Ten had met a man who had lost his hand and told him in a whisper that after he did, he had screamed and cried. The man had laughed, saying it was just his hand, and at the time, it felt like the worst thing in the world. 

Lu Ten wondered why he wasn’t feeling that way now. Why he hadn’t before. There was something curdling in his chest, many things, if he was to be honest, but they festered and seeped instead of demanding to be set free. There was no grand release for these feelings. 

So he didn’t cry or scream at having lost portions of both his legs. He looked up briefly, stomach rolling slightly, heart aching, taking deep breaths until he could bear to look down again.

And then, he went to work. 

Lu Ten started with his left leg. He still had the knee on that one, and it was just a matter of providing some padding for his stump and adjusting the frame so that it was securely attached to his leg, both above and below the knee. 

Lu Ten straightened and folded his leg, wincing at the faint squeal of the metal frame adjusting to the movement and the weight of the prosthetic. 

Once he felt that it was secure enough, he moved onto his right leg. 

This was where the issue was. His knee had to be amputated on this one, which didn’t leave much of a leg to be secured to. The leg had measures in order to stay on, but he would have to relearn walking, because this knee wouldn’t respond to his body’s commands. He’d have to keep on crutches for a while, possibly always keep one around just for added support. 

Would he even be able to run anymore? What about climbing? Was every option other than shambling going to be barred to him?

Lu Ten’s harsh breathing reached his ears and he forced himself to count. He reached forty-six when he could bring himself to move forward, because he had lost a lot, but he would gain more back with the prosthetic leg than he would without it. 

So he wrapped a cloth around the remainders of his right leg, and forced himself to work slowly as he carefully fastened the leg in place. When he thought he was one, he tried lifting his new leg. 

It fell back to the ground in an instant. 

He hadn’t really expected how heavy the leg would be. 

Which would be a problem, but it would be _fine_. He grasped for the crutches, only for them to fall as well. 

Which would also be fine, because if the universe wanted to show him that his life was falling apart, he _knew_. 

The door opened and Lu Ten looked up to see Yuvan again. 

“Sorry,” Yuvan said, averting his eyes. Lu Ten frowned before realizing that it was probably because Lu Ten was only half dressed. Which was stupid, considering he had helped Lu Ten get dressed and clean before, but appreciated anyways. “I heard the sound.”

“Can you, uh,” Lu Ten cleared his throat, “can you get the crutches for me?”

Yuvan picked them up and handed them over, hovering as Lu Ten fitted them under his arms. It had been a while since he had to use them. That had been when his mother was still around, helping him move around on his crutches after eight year old Lu Ten had decided that he _had_ to scale the Fire Nation palace and then fell. 

She had been so worried when she heard his scream, and she hardly left him alone while he was recovering. Lu Ten had found it a bit stifling, but the aspects of mechanics she had managed to teach him more than made up for it. 

It had been their little secret, because no doubt it wouldn’t be seen as befitting of a prince. 

Thinking of it now, of the other things that Achala taught him, he wondered why it had to remain private. He understood with his extended family, but she had never shared it with his father. Lu Ten had pestered her about it, because he wanted to move onto larger projects and those were harder to hide, but she had never given in. 

Once, and only once, had she come close, and that had just resulted in a sigh. 

“Stubborn,” she had just muttered. Then, with a weight that Lu Ten still didn’t understand, “Just like me.” 

_Just like me_. Was it a reference to her name? Achala the Immovable would of course have a son who would inherit that trait. 

Or was it a reference to the Earth Kingdom? Lu Ten knew that his mother didn’t look like the rest of his family, that she wasn’t the kind of Fire Nation citizen portrayed on recruitment posters. And, if he strained, he thought he could remember her talking about the colonies. 

So had she been born there? Was her family from the Earth Kingdom? It would explain the stubborn comment, because it was always _stubborn_ when it came to the Earth Kingdom and _perseverance_ when it came to the Fire Nation. 

It was his father’s perseverance that kept him battering Ba Sing Se. It was stubbornness on the Earth Kingdom’s part to resist. 

A shiver went down Lu Ten’s spine, and his memories were plunged into a new light. 

Did… did his mother even _want_ to be with his father? Or was she like Ursa, because Lu Ten had not been too young to understand that Ursa was miserable and hadn’t at all wanted to marry Ozai. 

But Achala _hadn’t_ been miserable, not that Lu Ten, noticed at least. 

No, he realized. She hadn’t. And though she hid it well most of the time, she had been _scared_.

Lu Ten wondered what else he had missed. If the times she laughed at his father’s jokes were just acts, if everything was just an act. 

Sasrutha, her brother, _truth_ , had died young. Who was to say everything after that wasn’t just a lie? 

Someone cleared their throat and Lu Ten jumped, almost falling to the floor, if it was not for the stabilizing grip. 

“Sorry,” Yuvan said, and Lu Ten wondered why he was apologizing so much. “I didn’t want to interrupt your contemplation, but you had been standing there for a while.” 

“No, that’s fine,” Lu Ten said, readjusting himself and staring at the ground and then frowning. “I don’t have one hurt leg.” 

“... And?”

“Well, normally with crutches, that’s how it works,” he said. “One hurt leg, one not. Do I just move like I normally would with crutches? Which leg do I use to walk on first?”

“Suppose it depends,” Yuvan said, and Lu Ten was fairly certain he had never had to use crutches in his life. “Maybe just use whichever leg you want to start on?”

He had broken his left leg in that fall.

It was awkward, navigating with the prosthetic, even more so when a good portion of his vision remained blurry. Lu Ten winced when he heard the right prosthetic hit the ground. Then it hit the ground again. And again. And again. 

Lu Ten moved around a few more unsteady steps before coming to a halt, breathing heavily. Yuvan clapped and Lu Ten huffed the slightest bit. 

It wasn’t much, it wasn’t a solution to everything, but it was a start. 

The Dai Li agent visited again, and this time, another came in with him. 

“He’s here to make sure you don’t cheat,” said the one Lu Ten knew. Smiles, his brain dubbed them, because now that there were two, he couldn’t just think of them as the Dai Li agent. 

The other agent, Green, his mind whispered, just stood near the window. 

Lu Ten set up a game. He and Smiles played while Green watched. 

Lu Ten didn’t thank them for the prosthetics, and they didn’t mention anything about it. 

“I think I’m getting better,” Smiles just said at the end.

They weren’t. 

“I think you are, too,” Lu Ten just said.

There was something wrong in Ba Sing Se, and Lu Ten knew it had to deal with the Dai Li. Lu Ten didn’t know where he stood with the city, why Smiles, and now Green, were visiting him, but he knew the Fire Nation was wrong and should not win. 

So, Lu Ten thought as he started to run through strategies, would helping the Dai Li not help the Earth Kingdom?

Perhaps it would, but he didn’t even know what the Dai Li did, why they were _feared_. 

The Dai Li did obviously protect some aspects of the city, though. If he weakened them, then he weakened the city to another attack by the Fire Nation. And that was assuming he could do anything about the Dai Li. 

Iroh had told him that he could always count there being opposition to everything, so no doubt there were those against the Dai Li, but the question was whether they had the power to act on their feelings. 

Yuvan, Lu Ten noted, always knew the news. He had secured a way for Hafeeza to attend a university he was pretty sure she normally wouldn’t have been able to attend. He was taking care of Lu Ten.

Lu Ten cleared the table. Maybe Hafeeza was right in that he should start doing something other than playing pai sho. 

&&&

Sasrutha seemed different the next time Hafeeza was able to visit. Perhaps it was because his bruises had faded, and the only indication he had been hurt were the prosthetics, but he seemed the slightest bit better off. 

He still needed crutches to move around, and some days, he could only go by wheelchair according to Yuvan, but it was a far cry to how he had been when Hafeeza first pulled him out. 

It made her wonder why he asked to talk to both her and Yuvan privately. 

Maybe he wanted to try and return home. He hadn’t spoken of it, not to her and not of a place to Yuvan, but it was a definite possibility.

The quiet, “I want to help,” that he said when both she and Yuvan entered the room took her by surprise. 

“What?” Hafeeza asked. 

“I want to help with what you’ve been doing,” Sasrutha said. 

“And was it that we’re exactly doing?” Yuvan asked in a flat voice. 

“You said that there are ways to get around without proper identification,” Sasrutha said, looking at Hafeeza, “and you,” now he looked to Yuvan, “get news despite there being no war in Ba Sing Se.”

Hafeeza knew better than to throw a look at Yuvan, so she didn’t, but she would be sure to dress him down for this later. 

“The Dai Li are… wrong,” Sasrutha said. “At least some believe in what they’re doing, and with their level, I don’t think that’s a good thing. Since you seem to have experience with evading them, I’d either like to join in what you’re doing or enlist you to help.

“You realize that with a confession like that, we could technically report you, right?” Hafeeza asked, just to see how much of an idiot Sasrutha was. 

“I could also report you,” Sasrutha pointed out. “Besides, they like me better.” 

Hafeeza looked at Yuvan, who looked at her, equally as confused. 

“I play pai sho with two,” Sasrutha explained. “They break in most nights. Smiles plays most of the time but I finally got Green to play as well.”

“You let Dai Li in,” Yuvan said, almost blankly. Hafeeza agreed with the sentiment and privately thought that if they hadn’t moved Sasrutha, this wouldn’t have happened. 

“They came in without me doing anything,” Sasrutha said, “and I didn’t have prosthetics then, so it wasn’t like I could do anything.”

“You don’t just _interact_ with the Dai Li,” Hafeeza said. 

“Yeah, I didn’t know that at first and now they wake me up when they want to play pai sho, so there’s no getting out of it anymore,” Sasrutha said. “But that’s beside the point.” 

“Besides the point?” Yuvan hissed. “If you so much as question their motto, they take you somewhere where you’re forced to accept it, and they’ll make you thank them for it.”

“I… didn’t know that,” Sasrutha said, “but you did warn me about them, and they had been coming around anyway. I’m just the weird, oblivious outsider to them who got in an unfortunate accident.” 

“And when they have such a close eye on you, you want to move against them,” Hafeeza said and Sasrutha nodded. 

“I don’t have anything left for me,” Sasrutha said honestly. “There’s not really a home or family I can return to. I can’t really fight against the Fire Nation. I owe both of you and… and I owe the city, in a way. If I can help, I want to and I will.” 

“Let me talk with Yuvan a bit about it,” Hafeeza said, gripping Yuvan’s arm and pulling him away. “No funny business.” 

Sasrutha just leaned on one of his crutches as she pulled Yuvan just outside the room. 

“What do you think?” she asked. 

“You can’t be serious,” Yuvan said. 

In most other circumstances, she wouldn’t be. She’d take a look at all the pieces, at a man who appeared out of nowhere, who had communication with the Dai Li, who was able to put two pieces together and actually reach the right answer, despite the fact that any Ba Sing Se resident would know about illegal papers and news wasn’t too hard to find the higher up you went in the social ladder. 

Then again, Sasrutha _wasn’t_ a Ba Sing Se resident. Perhaps that was what made all the difference. 

“He’s not lying, I think,” Hafeeza said, “and if he gets started on the more low level stuff, if he does spill to his pai sho partners, then we’ll know and there won’t be much damage. If he’s so good at dealing with them, we can have him try to get information from them. Besides, he might have skills we need.” 

“I don’t like this,” Yuvan said and Hafeeza scowled. 

“Because you didn’t notice, or because you think he can’t do anything?” she asked, drawing sharp satisfaction at seeing a wince. 

“Fine,” Yuvan grumbled. “I’ll talk to my ma about it.”

Hafeeza nodded and they returned inside. 

“I don’t have to help in that field, if you don’t want,” Sasrutha said immediately. “If you have contacts outside the city, I could pass along information about the Fire Nation. General battle strategies they have and machinery, mostly. I’ve been with them for a while. Or I could just help in general with mechanics.” 

Hafeeza raised a brow. “Are you a mechanic?”

“Not officially,” Sasrutha said, “but my mother taught me a lot about it.”

“What can you do?” Yuvan asked. “With machinery.” 

“General repairs for most things, if I at least know the basic outlay of it,” Sasrutha said, “some invention, and concealment.” 

“Concealment?” Hafeeza asked. “Like, creating items that act as camouflage?”

“I could do that,” Sasrutha said, “but no. It’s… I don’t quite know how to explain it. The general topic for passing messages or making hidden compartments that won’t actually be noticed.” 

“And your _mother_ taught you this?” Yuvan asked.

“We lived in a place that required secrecy on some matters,” Sasrutha said flatly. “If there are some spare scraps around here, I think I can show you how it works.” 

“We’ll get you materials if we decide to take you on,” Yuvan said. “I’ll talk to our head and a decision will be made. If you get taken on, you won’t be doing any big scale things. It’s quiet work.”

Sasrutha gestured down to his legs. “I don’t think I can do big scale things.”

Hafeeza suppressed a snort. “Well, that’s that,” she said. “I expect you know not to talk.” 

“I know how to keep secrets,” Sasrutha said, looking vaguely amused. 

“And avoiding arising suspicion?” Yuvan asked. 

Sasrutha shrugged. “I think I’ve done a pretty good job of it so far.” 

“Well, you’ll break that streak if you don’t hurry,” Yuvan said. 

Sasrutha frowned and Yuvan rolled his eyes. 

“You’ve got a pai sho game with my ma,” he said and Sasrutha’s eyes widened and started to clamber away. 

“What was that about?” Hafeeza asked. 

“He’s never been late to a game before,” Yuvan said. “It’d be suspicious if he did so now.” 

“There’s more to it, though,” Hafeeza said, narrowing her eyes. 

“Ma gets terrifying if you miss a game,” Yuvan said. “She might as well kill you then.” 

“There it is,” Hafeeza said. “Now, help with studying, I’ve got an exam in a few weeks.” 

&&&

Iroh wondered at life, at how quickly and easily it could all fall apart. 

He lost his son in Ba Sing Se, something that ached and hurt so much more than the loss of the battle ever could. 

But it wasn’t just that Lu Ten had been killed. 

There was the fact that Iroh knew it wasn’t a quick death, that Lu Ten would have been crushed until he died, either underneath earth or bodies or both. He would have been in so much pain, and if Lu Ten ever had to die before him, Iroh had wanted it to be quick, to be without suffering. Lu Ten’s death had been neither. 

There was the fact that without a proper burial or acknowledgement, his spirit wouldn’t be able to rest. Iroh had made shrine after shrine, but he didn’t know if it was enough. He didn’t know what would be enough because he couldn’t just trust the old spirit tales, because what if they were _wrong?_ What if what Iroh thought helped didn’t, and his son was still out there, still suffering? 

There was the fact that it was Iroh’s fault that Lu Ten was there at all. It was Iroh’s vision that dragged him there, and if Iroh had known the price, he would have never gone to Ba Sing Se. There was the fact that if there was no war, then Iroh wouldn’t have had to lose his son. There was the fact that it took Iroh losing his own son to understand the crimes of his own nation and the crimes he had participated in. 

Iroh was working to fix as much of that as he could, to help the other nations against his own as he continued a spirit journey that was half an act, half anything but. 

And then he had learned from overhearing gossip that his nephew was dead, too. At first he had thought it was just news of Lu Ten’s death, bastardized from the gossip trail, but when he returned to a White Lotus base, he had been met with silence and pitying looks. 

Zuko was indeed dead. The story was that Earth Kingdom assassins killed him in retaliation for the damage done to Ba Sing Se. 

Zuko’s death, along with Lu Ten’s, was weighing heavily on his shoulders by the time he returned to Caldera. 

It was only there that he realized the story might be wrong. 

Zuko was dead, there was no mistaking it, but there was a coldness to Ursa now. She kept Azula close, something she hadn’t done before, and left Azulon and Ozai’s company at every opportunity. 

“We didn’t know where to find you, else we would have sent a message regarding the funeral,” Ozai said, and Iroh was certain that even if Ozai had known, there would have been convenient delays. There was a gloating look to his eyes, and Iroh wondered if Ozai had mourned his own son, even just a bit. 

Azulon welcomed him back, and there was something off about this manner. There was emphasis on some of his words that Iroh didn’t understand, and references that frustratingly flew over his head. 

And Azula. She had always been a prodigy, but even a prodigy shouldn’t have been able to make blue fire at eight, much less hold it consistently. 

She displayed it, burning for minutes, and glancing from Ursa’s clenched fist to how the light glinted in Ozai’s eyes to how Azulon watched it all, Iroh knew there was something very wrong here, something tied inextricably to to Zuko’s death. 

And looking at them all as the flame started to fade out, Iroh made a choice.

Azula did not like him much, that he knew. It did not help that Ursa was also suspicious of him. But Iroh plastered a smile on his face, made tea and offered a game of pai sho. 

“It’s a stupid game,” Azula said, sounding more like her brother than she knew. 

“If it’s stupid, then you can beat it,” Iroh replied smoothly, and Azula actually paused. 

“Fine,” she said and slid a tile forward. 

Iroh could have laughed. Or he could have had a semi heart attack. 

Instead, he just said, more of a joke to himself than to convey any real meaning, “I see you favor the white lotus gambit. Not many still cling to the ancient ways.” 

Azula narrowed her eyes and even Ursa looked at him strangely.

“Well, you’re old,” Azula said. Iroh furrowed his brows, which Azula took as a sign to explain. “You’re old, so you probably like to ‘cling to the ancient ways,’ and Zuko learned it from you.”

Iroh winced, instinctively looking away from his niece for the briefest of moments. If he had looked away for a second longer, he might have missed the glint in Azula’s eyes, like she had been looking for that reaction, like she had been testing him. 

As it was, he did not miss that look. And as it was, he couldn’t help but wonder if he had passed. 

“Go,” she said, voice bored. “It’s your turn.” 

Despite everything, Iroh smiled. 

This would be a very interesting game indeed. 

**Author's Note:**

> Zuko, when he learns that Lu Ten is committing treason technically against TWO governments, not to mention committing treason three years before he did: are you FUCKING KIDDING ME. can't have shit in this family.
> 
> Lu Ten fun facts: the only reason I seriously considered him being alive in this story was because I came across [this image](https://avatarnews.co/post/189781695345/general-iroh-and-his-son-prince-lu-ten) of Lu Ten and Iroh and started thinking. I'm placing his age about 20, which puts him between 18 and 19 when the siege starts. So he hasn't had a ton of military experience. 
> 
> Achala (Lu Ten's mother) fun facts: I made her up like three days ago and I am now so attached to her wtf. "Achala" as a name refers to a deity prominent in Vajrayana Buddhism (but is also more commonly spelled as Acala). That fact is unrelated to why I chose the name. It apparently means "the immovable" in Sanskrit, and unless my plans change, it will be a very fitting name. 
> 
> But also can we talk about how a relationship tag apparently does not exist for Lu Ten and his mother? Like I get she's super minor (she doesn't even have a name and her existence is more implied) but there's an "Iroh's Wife & Jeong Jeong" tag and I think if that exists, there can be a mother and son tag.
> 
> I wrote this in the span of four days while neglecting responsibilities so feel free to let me know of typos, esp since I'm probably going to come back in a few days and re-edit this since it has the vibe of a mess and I'm so good at missing typos.
> 
> If you enjoyed, please leave comment/kudos because I'm regretting most things atm. Have a nice day, y'all.


End file.
